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Numbering comic books
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6 posts in this topic

A question that I was wondering about recently and didn't have a good answer for. Why did early GA publishers choose to number their comic books?

Obviously we take this for granted now, and given that Silver age to modern comics often have ongoing stories, continuity and numbering is useful for knowing where in a series you are, but most early comics were just reprints of newspaper strips or single issue stories. Some early comics did just have dates and months instead of numbers on the cover but most books still seem to have numbers rather than just dates like magazines.

Can anyone shine some light on why comic publishers decided to number their issues?

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10 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Very interesting, thank you, that's just what I was looking for. I don't know much about Dime Novels, so I never made that connection, but that could explain why comics mostly inherited numbering rather than volume/monthly issuing.

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1 minute ago, OdinsSecrets said:

Very interesting, thank you, that's just what I was looking for. I don't know much about Dime Novels, so I never made that connection, but that could explain why comics mostly inherited numbering rather than volume/monthly issuing.

It is interesting isn't it. Incidentally, comics without cover numbering can be difficult to collect I find. The Charltons I collect from 1961 don't have them so I have to take a book with little pictures of them to fairs. Comics are great aren't they :)

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24 minutes ago, OdinsSecrets said:

Yes I have always been more hesitant about many pulps for that exact reason, they are often difficult to remember, search for, etc. Guess the fact that most publishers decided to go with sequential numbering was a blessing for all of us who collect now.

And then there’s Cat-Man Comics, which probably has the most complicated numbering of all the Golden Age comics.

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Edited by Electricmastro
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